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A viral letter by then-Google employee James Damore has renewed the conversation about diversity in Silicon Valley. One thread of the ensuing debate has focused on the scientific validity of Damore’s claims that men and women do in fact differ in their preferences. An unspoken assumption has been that differences in preferences—if such differences exist—would go a long way toward explaining why women have remained underrepresented in tech and similar fields, despite efforts to increase diversity.

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The obvious—and dominant—answer is to explain how the mind works. The statistical methods typically employed by psychologists are set up to answer questions related to cause and effect.

But this is not the only way to approach science—or statistical methodology. In a preprint paper currently under review, researchers Tal Yarkoni and Jacob Westfall suggest that psychologists should shift their emphasis in the direction of prediction.